Yet again, a federally mandated safety technology might have prevented a major train disaster
Tuesday night’s derailment of Amtrak Northeast Regional 188 has claimed at least seven lives, injuring dozens more. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has now taken over the investigation — which could last weeks, or months — but The Wall Street Journal is already reporting that the train is believed to have been traveling over 100 miles per hour near a curve designed for a speed limit of just 50.
How does that happen?
Human error is all too real in every form of transportation — operator fatigue or carelessness can certainly cause a train to go too fast, and it sometimes does with tragic results — but the technology to stop trains from going too fast already exists. It’s called Positive Train Control (PTC), and it will…
Source:: The Verge